Shattered Grace (Fallen from Grace)
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Copyright © 2013 by K Anne Raines
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Table of Contents
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the lord my soul to keep,
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the lord my soul to take.
-- The New England Primer --
Gone
.
He was actually gone.
Grace shook her head in disbelief as she wiped at her sensitive, puffy eyes with a rough tissue, unable to wrap her mind around the fact her grandfather was never coming back. He hadn’t been sick, didn’t seem to be slowing down at all, and yet…
He was gone.
With his death, he seemed to steal away what Grace had always so desperately wanted—the binding ties of family. Instead of receiving the safety and warmth of a familial bond from the two individuals who brought her into this world, she received it unconditionally from her grandfather. Through his love, she had a life. What she had now was anything but. It was dark and lonely and hopeless. He was the only person who had ever understood her and, to be honest, the only person in her life who had ever tried.
Time and time again her grandfather had told her she was a survivor, and even embraced her difference as if it were his own. Her difference was nothing but a curse. To her it was, anyway. Grace didn’t think she would survive much past this day. Obviously, he was wrong. She really wasn’t that strong.
With trembling hands, she swiped at a lone tear dangling from her chin. She tried to remember a single day in her seventeen years that he hadn’t been a part of, and she came up empty. All of her memories had traces of him.
The large manor that felt more like her home than the one she shared with her mother was filled with family. The remains of her family were going through the motions of the post-funeral visitation, and yet, there she sat, never more lost and alone. Every one of them avoided looking her in the eye, and no one offered her any kind of condolence. If a pair of eyes did chance to meet hers, there was nothing in the hollow gaze that could be considered kind or heartfelt, but was instead biting and cold. Especially the murderous glares from her much older cousin Rose.
Grace had always been the black sheep, so this was nothing new. Defiantly, she continued watching them all with contempt, refusing to hide how she truly felt toward them. Every single one of her family members mooched off the man they buried today. He had been nothing to them but a meal ticket. Even to her mother.
Grace watched from her lonely vantage point on the stairwell as her relatives milled about below, making themselves quite at home as they pretended to grieve together. Mourning didn’t move them all in swarms around her grandfather’s belongings. Greed did. She watched as they salivated over every possession with longing, sometimes going so far as to pick up a piece of bric-a-brac, turning it over nonchalantly as if to see if their name was penciled with intent by the deceased on a piece of tape underneath, before replacing it on the polished furniture with disappointment. The awful part about the whole sham was they believed they were fooling each other. They only pretended to be grieving. Grace wanted nothing more than to punch them in their pathetically sad faces.